2014 Voter Survey on Public Land

The UM Crown of the Continent and Greater Yellowstone Initiative is pleased to make available the results of the June, 2014 Voter Survey on Public Lands which it commissioned to garner better understanding of Montanans’ attitudes toward public lands issues and debates playing out across the state. Major issues explored included Wilderness designation, privatization of public lands, the perceived impacts of public lands on various aspects of life for Montanans, as well as others. The poll’s results clearly show that, as Co-Director Rick Graetz points out, "…Montanans have a love affair with their public lands" and "view not just wildlife conservation as important, but also the value of wild lands and open space for their quality of life and economic well-being." The poll was conducted jointly by Republican pollster Lori Weigel of Public Opinion Strategies and Democratic pollster Dave Metz of Fairbank, Masline, Maullin, Metz and Associates. A summary of the results and the full survey are available for download here.

Question 2: When you think about life in Montana and what you would like to keep or retain for future generations growing up in the state, what are the two or three things you would NOT want to change about Montana?

About the Initiative

The University of Montana recently announced that the initiative known since 2008 as the "UM Crown of the Continent Initiative" has expanded and become the "UM Crown of the Continent and Greater Yellowstone Initiative." We now focus our efforts, including our "Crown of the Continent and Greater Yellowstone E-Magazine" on both of these extraordinary ecosystems, each with iconic National Parks at their centers. Both this website and the E-Magazine continue to make available important and, we hope, enlightening information, stories, scientific articles, maps, historic features, news, art work, and photography. After introducing the addition of Greater Yellowstone to the initiative with an issue of the E-Magazine focused solely on the GY, our most recent issue focused on both, as it will in future issues as well. We are currently working the next issue that will appear in September. In the meantime, we invite visitors to this website to take a look at the most recent issue that includes articles on goat research in Glacier National Park, on the history of the Grizzly Bear Recovery Program in the Greater Yellowstone, personal stories about a transplanted New Yorker-become-Montana conservationist and about the oldest National Park Ranger in the U.S. This issue also contains pieces on the Yellowstone River, the second of the three initial explorations of the area that became Yellowstone National Park, fens on the Rocky Mountain Front, and the marvelous Glacier Park artwork of Montana water colorist Marsha Karle, plus much more.

We hope that visitors to this website will browse further here, access that and earlier issues of our E-Magazine, and send us their comments and questions about any or all of this to us at crown.yellowstone@mso.umt.edu. In the meantime, we hope that all of our visitors are spending at least part of their summer out in the Crown, in Greater Yellowstone, or in other inspiring, informative, and enjoyable parks, forests, and natural places in our special region or beyond.